Jade and YOY!

Allison and I tore through the filtering a lot faster than than we predicted.  We collected and filtered a total of 14 carboys of water (~280 L of water) and extracted organic matter from 5 of those carboys (100 L water).  The past couple of days we worked on packing up and shipping the remaining 9 carboys (55 to 60 lbs each) back to Ohio State University!

We had a few extractions remaining to do and we still needed to collect some soils from around Toolik for Allison, who is examining plant uptake and soil sorption of several hormones.  She will be using the organic-rich tundra soil as a comparison to some of the agricultural soils she has been using for her experiments.  We decided to tackle the soil collection first, combining the trip with a hike up Jade mountain, located on the opposite shore of Toolik Lake from the field station.  We took a canoe across the lake and collected soils just off shore, to prevent any contamination from the field station from influencing the samples.  After a bit of digging, we realized that it is surprisingly difficult to cut through the tough root system of the moss and grass that dominate the tundra!  However, after a bit of work (and a lot of jumping on the shovels) we successfully collected enough soil.  We tucked the shovels and soil samples underneath our overturned canoe on shore, and headed up Jade.  It was a gorgeous day, yet clouds loomed over the horizon threatening rain, so we didn't dawdle in the hike -- which means that I sadly didn't take too many pictures.

A friendly Sik Sik (arctic ground squirrel)!

Toolik and the Dalton Highway from the top of Jade Mountain!

We made it down Jade as the winds started to pick up.  The trip back across the lake was directly into the strong gusting winds and we made only slow, halting progress across the lake as we headed back toward Toolik.

There were quite strong winds, which resulted in some interesting clouds.  From what I have read, the choppy/grated - looking clouds are an indicator of turbulent winds.

During our venture back, we spotted a family of loons!  The two parents were diving into the water to collect food to bring back to the babies.  Loons primarily eat fish, but will eat other small fauna if necessary.

The whole Loon family!

One of the loon parents, just before it dove to catch its prey.

Loons are about the size of a duck or a small geese, yet their markings and call is extremely distinct.  They are difficult to take pictures of in the water since their bellies are submerged as they swim.  The wind and waves also didn't help in photo documenting the loons, yet I managed to get a couple of pics that you can really see their gorgeous markings!!

The loon showing off his gorgeous markings!

The loon parent and chick as they swam away

Since we only have a little work left, we seized the opportunity on Friday to go out with Elissa and her assistant Andrew to go catch young graylings known as YOY, which stands for Young of the Year.  Elissa works for the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and one of her many projects is to track the yearly growth and development of the graylings.  They have 5 sites on the Oksrukuyik Creek, where they have been collecting for multiple years.  We hunted the YOY with small fish nets (like those you use in an aquarium).  The YOY are quick and blend easily into rocks, which makes catching them actually quite a challenge! We learned how to corral the YOY into a corner to catch or move a mass of YOY toward other people standing waiting with the nets.  By the end of the day, we were a YOY catching machine!

Elissa putting our YOY in fresh water for their trip back to the lab

The YOY are still tiny, but I am told that they are significantly larger right now than at the beginning of the season.  Apparently when they were first collecting the YOY, they were just tiny little eyeballs with fins!

Some of our successfully caught YOY

YOY closeup.  They are quite pretty fish, with tiny little spots all over them.

While out YOY hunting, we actually spotted a Caribou prancing through the tundra!

Caribou!!

 In the afternoon, we took the truck back out to Imnavait since we had caught wind of a fox family living out near the river.  We spotted them immediately upon driving up the access road to the creek.  There are supposedly 3 or 4 baby foxes, but some of them are a tad skittish.  However, 1 of the fox babies was quite brave and seemed unafraid as we watched him sleep.

Yawn!

"what are you looking at?"

Nap time!

Jungle Women!

We left Jaco saturday morning for Tom and Susan's bed and breakfast in San Ramone. We were sad to leave the beach, but were excited to see a new part of the countryside as well as spend some time with my mom's friends. However, before we left Jaco my mom and I had to have one last adventure: zip line-ing through the canopy! It was so much fun. I was a little worried since my mom is a tad afraid of heights ... we saw one of the zip line platforms during our run up the canopy trail the other day and she said, "oh Maya, look at that tree house!" and I responded, "Mom, that is one of the zip line platforms." Her only thought about it was, "crap that's high!" She was a little hesitant at first, but after the first few platforms, she started to get into it and have some fun. There were 15 total platforms that started high up in the canopy and gradually decreased in elevation so you could see all the different levels of the canopy.

We didn't see many animals along the zip line unfortunately. I think between the noise the zip line makes and the people noises, we effectively scared them all away. At the bottom of the zip line we did see a nest of little parakeets and several iguanas!

After our zip line adventure, we finished packing up our bags and left with several of my mom's friends who were going to drive us to Tom and Susan's bed and breakfast in San Ramone, Vista Valverde (www.vistavalverde.com).

We stopped along the way to visit the crocodiles. For some reason, there is a particular bridge between Jaco and San Ramon that is known for having tons of crocodiles. We hopped out of the car (but remained high above them on the bridge) to take a look. There were so many crocodiles there! Many were easily 15 ft long. It was quite impressive!

We made it to Vista Valverde late in the afternoon. Vista Valverde is beautiful. I am really impressed with the amazing views and beautiful countryside. We are now at about 4,000 ft above sea level in the mountains. It is so beautiful here, with rolling hills and large expanses of untouched terrain. Tom and Susan have done an amazing job building the guest houses (cabinas) and the Taller (workshop), where they serve meals for guests. Once we arrived, my Mom and Tom caught up on old times. We had a very nice evening hanging out and chatting.

One of the cabinas for guests of Vista Valverde

Costa Rican day 2 and Critters!

Today was quite a busy day. It started bright and early with a 7:30 pick-up for our kayaking trip. We kayaked out to a beach a little ways off and stopped for a brief snorkeling trip. The region north of jaco is experiencing super strong winds (I hear 60-90 mph!!!) which has churned the ocean up quite a bit, even in the much calmer playa [beach] Jaco. Unfortunately, that also means relatively cloudy conditions for snorkeling. Despite this problem, I did however find several very bright blue fish which I think were some type of wrasse (however this is such a large family encompassing so many different species, I am probably safe guessing wrasse). I also think there were a couple of surgeon fish or butterfly fish, but it was hard to tell from above through the murky waters. After a brief break on the shores and some delicious fresh pina [pineapple], sandia [watermellon], and coconut we hopped back in the kayaks to head back to the vans.

Following our kayak adventure was our second surfing lesson. My mom did great catching a bunch of waves all the way in to the shore! I had a couple of good waves today, but I tanked on a bunch of waves and the instructor just kind of looked at me and gave me a look that said, "what just happened?" I also was trying really hard to get the board turned parallel to the wave to ride it in, but I just couldn't get it around! I asked him for advice and he said, " don't know why you are having problems, that is just strange. it is so easy." Well great. Anyways, I did catch one that I got the board around and I did have a few I road all the way in on, so it was still good. This evening my mom and I continued on for a Bikram class at the studio at the hotel. It was a good way to end the day.

Anyway, I promised critters in this blog. Sadly, because I didn't have my camera out with us during all of the water adventures, I don't have my own pictures to share of all of the exciting animals, but I found some pictures from other sites. The first evening we were here, we were eating dinner outside in the resteraunt and pieces of bark kept falling from a nearby tree. I was really confused until someone came out with a flashlight and found up in the tree a coatimundi or "pizote." They are kind of like the tropical racoon.

(from naturalphotos.com)

Today during our surf lesson we actually spotted several different types of birds: the giant frigate birds (or fragata en espanol) and the beautiful macaw. The Macaws were flying in a group overhead, so I am not entirely sure if it was the scarlet macaws, but they definitely looked red and blue so I think it is quite possible.

(two scarlet macaws from http://cityparrots.org)

Critters!

Here are some critter pics that I kept meaning to post...

The sik sik is the common ground squirrel here. They make these funny little calls that sound like they are actually saying sik sik really quickly. The first pic is of a sik sik that was very unhappy with me. I had set up my filtering station on the I-series on a rocky area, under which I think he had made his home. He kept poking up his head between different rocks and making his warning call. I think he was pretty angry... The second sik sik picture is of one I saw behind Lab 3, rummaging for things to make a nest out of.


Below is a couple of pictures of Wooly Bear Caterpillars. They are so fuzzy! I love em! The wooley bears are out in force right now. Even when it snowed, they could be seen crawling all around across the surface of the snow. I walked up the boardwalk the other day and spent my whole time up moving the Wooly Bears off of the walkway... They were in serious danger of getting smushed!


Lots of caterpillars are actually out right now oddly enough. Another common one I have seen are these neon green caterpillars. This is one I caught crawling over my backpack the other day.

Hike to the Itkillik River

Sunday was my last day off here at Toolik. There was a pretty large party Friday night celebrating Julia and Colin's last night at camp. Everyone was up pretty late, so not many people were up for hiking first thing Sunday morning. However, Jason and Jeremy were up for a full day! Elissa, Garret, and Jeff went with us for the first portion of the hike and then left us at about noon to head home and we continued on. The plan was to complete a totally carbon emission free hike -- minus our own breathing! -- (I know, we are all dorks). We took a canoe across the lake to the base of Jade mountain. The group headed up jade and paused at the top for lunch. Then Jeremy, Jason, and I all headed on toward the Itkillik River. It was a bit of a tundra slog. We were hoping to follow up a tributary to its confluence with the river. We were planning on finding a good place to rock hop across and then climb up a few small mountains beyond the tributary before heading back toward our canoe.

We had a good day. None of us were in a rush, we just wanted to enjoy the good weather and each others company! We definitely had some time for silliness. We detoured to check out any caribou horns we could find. Jason actually spotted a pair of horns! The pic to the left is of him and Jeremy pretending to be a caribou...

Later in the day, we wandered into a particularly dense blueberry patch and decided to pause to pick blueberries! They are so tastey and there are sooo many right now
My other favorite berry is the cloudberry. They are very unusual, but actually pretty tastey...sort of like sweet tarts. However, they have a rather odd texture which is a little hard to get used to at first; they are kind of slimey but have seeds inside. They are all finally starting to ripen! I love picking berries while we are out in the field.

We spent some time exploring the area, seeing what we could find. We also picked up a lot of random trash including a pair of old ski goggles, a front wheel of a small plane (?), and an apparently abandoned wooden marker stake. At one point, we stumbled upon a pond with crazy green algae. It was such a seemingly unnatural color!

The river crossings were pretty tough. The water is just above freezing and we couldn't find any place narrow enough or rocky enough to cross via rock jumping. We really didn't want to just walk across since we still had quite a hike after the first river crossing, so we decided to ditch the boots and socks and cross barefoot....pain. lots of pain. Within a few seconds of putting our feet in, it felt like pins and needles were poking them all over and the rocks on the bottom of the river were like daggers! The second our feet came out of the water, we went through the painful process of our feet warming back up again. Who would have thought it would have been that bad. Unfortunately we crossed were the tributary was split into three branches so we had 3 painful barefoot crossings to totally get across the river. The final crossing was the longest, so Jeremy decided we needed to sing while crossing to take our mind off of the pain. We sang "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah" at the top of our lungs. I think we were pretty much shouting the words, but we made it across. We scrambled up the steep banks barefoot and just collapsed in the sun for a short while to warm up our toes before putting the socks back on. During our return trip over the river after our summit, we decided to aquaboot it across (aka. hike across in our hiking boots and get wet). Although cold, the hiking boots significantly reduced the painfulness of the crossing experience!

We saw a bunch of caribou with rather large racks at the top of the small mountain -- or large hill -- that we climbed. Initially we thought they were sheep, but realized quickly that they were caribou. After we climbed over the peak, we ended up just a few yards away from some of them. I don't think I have been quite that close before! It was pretty awesome. I have to see if I can get pics from Jason to post. I ran out of space in my camera memory by this point in the day!

We arrived back to camp a little after 11 pm and boated back across the lake. We were tired, but quite pleased with our adventures.

First Snow and Deadhorse

This past month has been fairly dry, but the skies opened up last night and it poured! As the night wore on, the downpour turned to snow...We woke this morning to almost 3 in of snow on the ground! (picture left, snowy Toolik Field Station from afar)

Since it was my day off of work, I decided to head with a group up to Deadhorse and Prudoe Bay to explore a bit and drop Breck, one of the PI's off at the airport. It was about a 3 hour drive north to ... well, not much.

Deadhorse is about as cheerful as its name sounds. The "town" is basically an industrial wasteland. The buildings are all metal sided boxes. We dropped Breck off at the airport and then headed to the one general store located above the sigle hardware store...and that was about it. There were a couple hotels which housed the only resteraunts ... so we decided to go home to Toolik.

Kate and I posing infront of the sign posted at the general store

There were Environmental Protection signs all over the place ... a little ironic in such an industrial place ...

We did sucessfully see some wildlife on our trip however. On the ride up, we saw a bunch of muskox hanging out right by the road! On the way back we saw several caribou.

Thermokarst Sampling!

I went out with Sarah again this past Tuesday to help her with thermokarst sampling up the Toolik inlet. She has several stations set up to monitor temperature at various depths. It is impressive how cold it gets just beneath the surface of the tundra! We did some digging to bury new sensors and to bury all of the excess cords. Sarah hopes to leave the sensors out logging over winter, so we were attempting to reduce the amount of machinery above ground that wildlife may take interest in. To the left is the above ground portion of one of her temperature logging stations.

It was fun to dig through the tundra and see the soil horizons. The tundra we were digging in is pretty old, so it has strongly developed soil horizons with marked changes in color. Dan would call this one of my dork out moments, but they are really pretty looking!


While out we also measured frost depth along 3 transects as well as soil moisture, conductivity, and temperature. We visited the ISCO water sampler (a machine that automatically samples water at a set time interval, picture, left) to acidify some of the water samples and check to ensure the machine was okay. Apparently the bears really have an affinity for the ISCOs for some odd reason often destroy them!

After we returned home, I headed up the boardwalk to collect rain samples. The past few weeks the dragon flies have come out in abundance on that hill. They tend to perch along the boardwalk!

Arctic chickens!

There was a little family of ptarmigans that hung out outside the lab for a couple of days. They were so cute! They look just like the arctic version of a chicken..

The Burn ... and the moose chase

The largest recorded fire in Alaska occurred during the summer of 2007, when 256,000 acres of tundra ignited. There are several groups on camp that have started researching the regeneration of the land in the past couple of years and its effects on the land and water ecosystems. This past Sunday I went out with Cody to help with sampling and bathymetry of several lakes out at the burn site. Cody is studying the effects of the fire on lake productivity, so he was collecting water and zooplankton samples as well as several lake sediment cores to analyze sediment productivity. It took us about a half hour to arrive at the first lake we were sampling called North Lake. It was really cool to see the patterned ground from the air! Freeze-thaw action of the permafrost causes the land surface to break into polygons known as patterned ground. It makes the landscape look almost scaley (pic right). While we were flying over Horn Lake, we watched a moose wade across the water (I unfortunately didn't have my camera on the flight out, so I didn't get a picture of it, but I eventually met the moose later in the day, at a distance a little too close for my comfort level ...).

After the flight, we finally touched down at our first lake for the day. The tundra at the burn site is noticeably charred and the shorelines of the lake are definitely blackened from the fire. However, over the past couple of years, promising new growth has started, and now covers a significant portion of the charred ground.


We continued from North Lake to Horn lake where I would be responsible for mapping bathymetry of the lake. Cody fixed a little pinger on the bottom of the boat, which was connected to a GPS unit and tells depth at each point. Basically my job was to paddle back and forth accross the whole lake to map out changes in depth. It was a decently windy day and quite a large lake, which made the bathy mapping a really good work out! When I made it about half way across the lake, I spotted a moose on the far shore. He (or she?) wasn't full grown, but was definitely large. I thought, "well he's just on shore; I am okay with that." I continued mapping for another half an hour and the moose sat down in the tundra to watch me. However as I got closer to him, he suddenly stood up and then started getting in the water. My first thought was, "uh oh ..." and then he started wading accross the lake coming toward me. Now, the lake was really shallow--about a half meter deep in the middle of the lake--so although he couldn't charge, he could still probably trample me effectively. I immediately thought about the conversation we had in the helicopter on the way out about how more people have been killed from moose charging than grizzly bear attacks and I really wasn't about to test that statistic. As the moose continued toward me, I spun the boat and booked it back to shore. Although I was paddling against the wind, I paddled as hard as I could, and definitely gave it all I had left after doing all of the bathymetry mapping! Needless to say, he eventually lost interest in me and continued to the other side of the lake. However, I decided not to test him and pushed on back toward our launch point on shore.

Fish Tagging at the Kuparuk River

On Saturday I decided to tag along with Elissa and her assistants to the Kuparuk River to tag grayling fish. It was another beautiful day (we've had a fair few of these this week!) and I really didn't want to get stuck inside mixing reagents all day. We all trudged out in the tundra a few kilometers from the road to a deep section of the river to fish. Elissa and Max used fly rods and Aleah and I used the reel lines. Everyone had pretty good success catching fish (except for me that is). At the very end of the day, I hooked two fish, both of which sadly got away. However, together, the other three had around 8 fish to tag. After watching Max and Aleah tag a few fish, I gave it a try myself. I just felt really badly for the fish we tagged, but I decided to go ahead and learn the process. The fish were put in a bucket that had some chemicals in it to knock them out. Each fish was then weighed, measured, and then tagged. To tag the fish, we first used a scalpal to slice a shallow hole on the fish's ventral side just above the fins (pic left: Max tagging a fish). Then we had a large syringe that contained the electromagnetic tag in in. Each cylindrical tag is the diameter of a pill and around 2 cm long. To tag the fish, we inserted the syringe tip about 1 cm in the slit we made and depressed the plunger to insert the tag.

We returned the fish to shallow calm water for them to recover and wake up from the drugs. Gradually they would become responsive and swim away. Elissa uses the tagged fish to study the grayling migratory patterns. She has tagged fish at various points from the headwaters of the river to further down stream to track when the tagged fish pass underneath an antennae she set up downstream.

Max moving the grayling though the water to get fresh water into the fish's gills speeding the recovery process.

A recovering grayling post tagging